Well, it's been a long journey for me & one that's not over yet! Every day I learn more & practice more & learn different techniques & keep taking classes. I think once the spark is there, the learning never stops!

My journey started from a place that I never thought I would be in.
I was always fascinated by penmanship & loved calligraphy. I was the girl in school who had the best handwriting & got caught writing notes from "parents" as to why their child was missing from school the previous day!

To this day, I often get told that I
must be a teacher because of my penmanship (um nope!)
I had always wanted to study calligraphy but after college, getting married, having two babies...I just never focused on making it a priority. Jump ahead 10 or so years & out of the blue, my then husband decided he wanted to separate. Completely taken by surprise...I had no clue & was devastated.
Unfortunately, we had to live together for a year & a half as we wanted our children to finish the school year at their current school & waited to sell our house in the summer. It was one of the hardest years of my life. It was so difficult living with someone who, after 10 years, didn't love me anymore. As we weren't going out as a family any longer, the times that he spent with the children left me with "free" time & at those moments, when I was alone, I dwelled on the downturn that my life had taken & wallowed in grief while missing my kids.
It was at that point that I decided that I was going to do something for myself to get me out of the funk & find something that would occupy my time while the kids were out with their dad. I began searching for things that I was interested in...paper crafting, scrapbooking...then I remembered CALLIGRAPHY! For the longest time, I found nothing that was in my area or hundreds of dollars that a soon-to-be-single-mom couldn't afford. Then I got a hit! A local-ish pen store was having a workshop & it was not hundreds of dollars!
Signed up immediately & that is how my journey began! Since then, I've been back & forth to the store for numerous workshops & joined a local calligraphy guild & starting selling some handmade things.
ETA: My then husband & I did separate & the children & I moved to a new city & basically started life over again as a family of three. My kids are with me every day (minus two weekends) & we are all happy. I continue to be thrown curve balls from my ex but what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right?